Jean Sprackland and Francis Spufford
Francis is the author of I May Be Some Time, The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys. He and Jean dive into a conversation about his 2012 novel Red Plenty, a book about “the moment in the mid-20th century when people believed that the state-owned Soviet economy might genuinely outdo the market, and produce a world of rich communists and envious capitalists.”
Spufford’s 2012 novel, ‘Red Plenty’
He believes that religion is receding and so he turned to writing as a place where ‘books do what books do’ and bring into focus Christianity and its properties. Francis knew that his first task for this book was to condense and sum up the whole of the New Testament into 30 pages, for those who know little about the content of the bible. ‘It was an interesting technical challenge,’ he says wryly.
Francis tells the story of The Return of the Prodigal Son in this cut down form. The younger son is ‘all flash and leather trousers’, easy to dismiss and cast out for doing wrong. But as the son’s father realises, we all need someone to accept us even after doing something wrong. ‘This is my son. He was lost and now is found.’ His ending sentence gathers an applause that fills the room.
Later, Francis explains how ‘comfort zones are for pink stuffed things’ and how he is always trying to attempt new writing challenges. Fiction, he explains is something he had to ‘creep up on’ and had to learn in stages. The Child that Books Built and Red Plenty are a credit to his versatility. He also writes memoirs and engages in science and travel writing.
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